Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23
July 16, 2017
If you stop and give it some honest thought, it becomes apparent that life can have a way of being rather frustrating and perhaps even futile. Even the simple routines of life from rising, eating, cleaning, resting, working, and sleeping, when considered objectively, can begin to seem rather pointless. They take on a form and cycle that appears to be endless and ultimately unproductive. Every day presents its usual tasks: shower, get dressed, make the bed, prepare breakfast, brush your teeth, hurry out the door, fight traffic, arrive at work, and on and on and on. It so easily becomes a mindless cycle on a continuous loop, week in and week out. The daily and weekly rhythm of chores, responsibilities, and duties press on you, demanding to be done. So, you slog through the routine conquering each task and meeting each demand only for the same task and duty to reappear again. The tidily picked up room atrophies into chaos. The sparkling car gets rained on and dusted and dulled with road grime. The empty laundry basket fills up, and the fresh cut grass just grows long, rank and uneven, or worse, dries up in a choking drought and looks like death no matter how hard you try to prevent it. A sense of futility has a way of invading life, and not just the mundane and insignificant parts of life, even the most precious things in life can fall victim to a lurking sense of futility. You work hard to build a solid marriage, but regardless your intention and efforts, you still seem to get tripped up over the same old arguments, and your spouse just won’t seem to learn what you know he or she needs to learn, and won’t change the way that you know he or she needs to change. It seems that your kids forever battle the same old behavior problems no matter how many times you’ve had a heart-to-heart talk designed to take care of it “once and for all.” It never does. So, what’s the point? Is it all a waste? Why work hard at a job that produces little satisfaction? Why keep your car clean when it will only get dirty again? Why try hard to do your best when the guy who makes a half-hearted effort gets the same benefit? Why care so much when it all seems so futile?
“Behold the sower…” That’s how the story starts. You know the story well. Of all the parables in the Bible, the story about the sower and his haphazard planting of his seed is perhaps one of the most familiar. In your life, you’ve heard or read this text dozens of times, you’ve probably heard a number of sermons on the parable, and maybe read a few devotions or lessons based on Jesus’ memorable account about the farmer and his crop. But, what you may not know is that the story is all about futility, work, and what is meaningful in life. In fact, this is the main point of the parable. Oddly enough, though, we often miss the main point. The problem is that we hear the parable and become intensely interested in the different places where the wildly sown seed lands. We forget all about the sower and zero-in on the soils. It becomes the parable of the four kinds of dirt and not the parable of the sower. Our attention is riveted on the four different outcomes of the various plantings, and we start to concentrate on the descriptions and the differences that exist between the path and the rocks and the thorn-infested ground, and the rich, fertile soil. Of course, the dirt has our attention because we see ourselves here in the parable. We’re the dirt, no doubt—we’re the recipients of the sower’s sowing, we receive the seed, the seed of God’s word, what Jesus calls the “word of the kingdom.” So, we ask ourselves, “What sort of dirt am I?” How do I receive and handle the Word of God when I get it? Sermons typically focus on the question of the sort of dirt each hearer may be, and naturally, everyone is exhorted to be good and fruitful dirt. It’s certainly a worthy exhortation, and one that bears some reflection. But, it’s not the point that Jesus is making. Not at all. Notice that Jesus does not tell his parable and then solemnly warn everyone to be good dirt and to watch out so that they don’t end up being rocky or thorny ground, much less a foot-worn path. No, Jesus puts the focus of his parable on the one who is doing the sowing and the results of his sowing. That’s the point of the parable. And that means that this is a parable about futility and the meaning of life itself.
Jesus tells the tale of a sower—a farmer who is planting his crop in the most unsophisticated way one can imagine—and in the most careless and indifferent way. If you have a lawn, you’ve probably replicated the image of the sower at least once when it was time to reseed. I have. Maybe you start with a spreader, but eventually there’s some seed left that you just scoop up with your hand and toss out into the yard. You’ve become a sower. And sowing, can easily generate a sense of futility, especially the way that the sower in the parable goes about it. He’s not exactly careful about where his seed falls. He lets it fly, and it lands anywhere from the pavement-hard path to the rocks or to the thorn patch. Most of us tend to be more careful when we sow—at least I take the time to sweep the seed from the driveway back into the grass. But, this sower just flings his seed and then waits to see what will happen. And in three of the four possible cases, what results is not good. What results is total failure. Talk about futility. The sower sows and some of the seed never sprouts at all, some sprouts but dries up—a victim of a St. Louis summer, or it gets choked out, or hailed flat, or flooded out, or eaten by a bird or a rat or a deer. There’s a lot of futility in sowing. So why bother to do it? Because sowers sow, that’s why.
It didn’t really matter what kind of results he could expect. He was a sower. He had to sow. Even if much of his effort would be wasted, he had to sow. Even if there were no immediate rewards, even if he saw no apparent results, but only mounting evidence of failure, he had to sow. He was a sower. It’s what he did. The sower did what he had been given to do. This is, I think, the single best answer to the nagging “why” questions that are created and cultivated by life’s experiences of apparent futility. Parents keep on doing the relentless work of parenting because that’s what parents do. They keep on working on the same things over and over again, not based on results, but based on responsibility. Husbands and wives keep on talking and forgiving and choosing to love and to respect not because there are always fabulous results or sudden impacts and changes to show for their efforts, but because that’s what married people do. Students study, pastors shepherd, teachers teach, accountants count, programmers program, managers manage and sowers sow. Results are actually almost entirely irrelevant. Even personal satisfaction and individual fulfillment don’t count for much. It doesn’t matter what your passions or interests or talents might be: you are simply do what you’ve been given to do. But a sense of futility, along with the frustration that accompanies it, can certainly hamper the effort, can’t it? Meager results, or long-delayed rewards, can throttle the greatest vocation and choke the life out of the most committed servant. Then, indeed, futility and frustration yield their harvest of empty ears, withered grain, and rotting fruit. Futility threatens us all—especially the futility we face when sowing the seeds of God’s Word.
But, behold, the sower goes out to sow…and behold, the remarkable and stunning results of the seeds that are sown. Oh, to be sure, some of what is sown is lost—in fact even much of it may seem to be lost. The birds get their feast, the sun takes its toll, and thorns snatch their share; but in spite of all that, God still gets his harvest. The sower of God’s Word has done his deed, and the lord of the harvest produces his results. The sower has nothing to do with the yield produced. Fruitfulness is entirely out of his hands—that’s the business of God. The sower sows; God produces. And what grace God bestows, what a harvest he brings: 30, 60, even 100-fold yields. In spite of all outward signs, regardless the apparent failure, in spite of delayed rewards, everything comes together in God’s time and his seed yields its fruit. By God’s grace, the sower’s efforts are not wasted. By God’s remarkable generosity, the labor is not lost and a harvest is realized. Futility gives way to fruitfulness.
Of course, there’s nothing new about any of this. It’s God’s standard way of operating. It’s the way he delights to work. Out of futility, he brings fruitfulness. Out of defeat, he brings victory. What can be more futile than a three-year ministry that concludes with the execution of the leader and a handful of perpetually-bewildered followers who all bail out in the crisis and run for their lives? What a waste. What more disastrous defeat than to have the chosen Messiah, the one who was going to restore all things to perfect fruitfulness and prosperity, left hanging on a cross ridiculed, scorned, damned and dead. A total waste. Futility at its worst. But, out of futility God brings the ultimate fruitfulness, he brings the first fruits of a new creation and a restored humanity. He brings forgiveness for the failures. He brings grace for the disasters. He brings new life for the dead and a fresh start to the decaying. Out of defeat, God brings the victory of resurrection and the assurance that creation will be remade, that the world will be restored, and that bodies sown in death will spring up out of the dirt and rot of the grave to life immortal. When God is at work, futility always gives way to fruitfulness. God always gets his harvest.
Take heart, people. The God who always gets his harvest is your God. He has sown his seed in you. He will bring it to a rich harvest. You are his crop. You are his fabulous harvest. It is God’s great delight richly to bless the work of his sowers—they do not work in vain. Their effort is not futile—how can it be when God is at work in and through them? What has been sown in you will not be wasted. And, what you, in turn, sow in and through your vocations and your words will not be wasted either. By his grace, God will bring his harvest in his way and in his time, and all that you do according to what he has given you to do will result in the fruit that he has planned—no matter how things may look at present. So, don’t sweat the apparent results that you see or don’t see. The harvest is not your business, and the rate of yield is not your concern. God will take care of that. Don’t give any credence to the thoughts of futility and frustration that will always manage to creep back into your days. That sense of malaise and hopelessness simply doesn’t belong among God’s people who are busy doing the work God has given them to do. It is God who has sent you to do his work—in your home, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your relationships. In those places, you do what you’ve been given to do, and you sow seeds. It is God who sent you to sow, and it is God who will take care of the results.
What you’ve been given to do, do. Be a father, be a wife, be a daughter, be a teacher, a student, a neighbor, a friend; and, in all those places, be a sower. And, God will be God and he will do what he always does. He’ll bring a harvest where none seemed possible. Mercifully, he raises little harvests even now, and you are blessed to see some results even here and now as he wills it. But, don’t forget his promise. Don’t forget the point of the parable: the best still lies ahead. Even now God is preparing an astounding last day harvest that will take your breath away. It’s coming. Sowers, sow! God will bring the harvest. Amen.